If you were bullied at School...

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....did history repeat itself and were your own kids bullied?

NC for this

DS starts school in September and I am really worried about bullying.

DH and I were both picked on in school during the 90s (different schools, opposite ends of the country). We both struggled through with no real friends/support and only found our tribe at Uni/6th form.

I don't want that for DS, but unfortunately he is the same as us in many ways (introvert,, fairly geek, shy) and already doesn't stand-up for himself at nursery.

DH thinks I am being overly anxious about it all

Either way - if you were bullied at school - were your own kids also bullied? How did you prevent it?

I was bullied terribly at secondary school. I was very worried about all of my children being bullied but, thankfully, my DSs have only had the odd run-in with unpleasant people. My DD is in Yr 5 and, unfortunately, girls friendships seem much more complicated so I’m not as confident for her. I’ve certainly done my best to give her a huge network of friends from different out of school activities so hopefully she won’t ever be as vulnerable as I was. Her closest friend has been quite unkind to her recently and it’s come very close to bullying but she has handled it herself with support from me behind the scenes. She feels better for sorting it herself and her friend now knows she doesn’t hold all the power in their friendship! Fingers crossed DD will feel more confident to call out her friends when they aren’t kind in future and, likewise, I hope they’d do the same for her - none of us are perfect.

I was at secondary.

Eldest has been. She has little in common with her classmates (small village school). She's highly academic and finds structured activities easier. She's yet to find her tribe.

Youngest has been described by the teacher at parents evening as the School's Golden child, on a pedestal by classmates. One teacher commented "it must be hard to be their sibling"

My experience hasn't set them up for anything - it's based on their own personalities and interests and their own classmates.

It's hard having one invited to all the parties and one invited to none.

My advice would be that your own friendships largely dictate the first year or two of school. So don't be THAT parent in school. Stay out of as much of it as you can or if you are involved, stick to the party line and keep your head down. Be so nice it's painful.

Easy to bully children do often go on to have easy to bully children. So although it’s not a hard and fast rule, it does happen fairly often.

especially if he is shy etc.

Its why I’ve put effort into raising an extrovert 😅

Yes I was I was always an outsider and have continued to be (I’m fine with this others not so much)

DS has not been bullied he is very popular he can be quite socially awkward, more so when he was younger.

I was bullied for an entire year when I was 14 by a group of older girls. I guess they got bored because they finally gave up.
My father had another daughter 30 years after me with a different women than my mum. My little sister was bullied in person & online mercilessly, some going so far as to tell her to kill herself and that she was worthless.
She didn’t tell anyone.
One day during lunch, she walked home and hanged herself. She wasn’t even old enough to drive. She was the sweetest, kindest person I’ve ever known.
I have a severe issue with bullies as a result.
Make sure your children feel comfortable talking to you about their troubles.

DreamTheMoors so sorry to read this it’s so sad and shocking

Internet bullying is a very serious issue it’s not so easy to just step away

I was bullied for a while in boarding school. It was mostly related to a few different things, being from a specific area, and also as a result of not having super wealthy parents (our family would have considered very very "well off" in our home area). Also, I feel the fact that I was considered very pretty and good academically made things even worse for me. I never ever told my parents. Being good at sports generally and (to everyones surprise, but not my own) being made captain of the hockey team I was lucky to be have those interests, and was not too bothered by it after the shock of the initial months.

OP, some things are also outside your control. Some years will be lucky in that they don;t have bullies, or a group of people that form and act as bullies.

I'm not aware if our boy were bullied, but then again my parents did not know about me. I always encouraged our boys with respects to sports. Hockey, football and running helped them fit in where they went. It was always a concern for me, as our boys changed school and scholl systems several times as we moved for work reasons.

Not so far. I have 6 who are either at school or have left school.

DD2 had an issue for a while as she has a health condition that can be funny to some (narcolepsy) so there was a brief issue with photos/videos and social media, but the school and a local community police officer sorted it very quickly.

I was relentlessly bullied at school because of my name and home life. My main thing with my kids was making sure they didn’t stick out like sore thumbs in the way I did.

we did have a brief issue of DD2 also bullying another child, but we, the school and the community police officer also jumped on that very hard, very quickly to sort it.

online bullying is a massive issue. Lots of people (irl and on threads on here) have said I’m way OTT with my kids - social media is checked regularly and absolutely no phones or devices in their rooms overnight - but it has worked so far. It’s relentless for a lot of kids now.

I was bullied relentlessly at school and like other posters I feel my parents really set me up for it, I was very shy and they changed my school often so I was always the new kid with no solid friendships, they always dressed me in odd clothes and I had terrible, severe haircuts that made me stand out. They were socially awkward themselves and they simply could not understand why a teenager would want to wear the same clothes as their friends or do anything to “fit in”.

I found out many years later that they had never believed I was being bullied, despite me telling them frequently and sobbing about it, so they had never spoken to the school about it. I’ll never forgive them for that.

So far my kids haven’t been bullied but I’ve made efforts to make sure they have a group of friends inside and outside of school, having parties and play dates and making sure they always have the “right” clothes and toys and putting them in activities to build their confidence.

Both DH and I have unfortunate surnames; I was bullied badly in primary/early secondary school although they didn't need to resort to my name that often. Primary school exacerbated by highly inappropriate instructions to staff (we didn't find that out till years after). DH claims he wasn't bullied; but I suspect he managed to navigate his first exposures ok-ish and then people didn't bother.

I don't think DD has been bullied exactly, but she grew apart from classmates from about year 3, switched schools in yr 5 to follow a special interest which helped, and now at uni hasn't necessarily found her tribe but seems to be comfortably finding people she gets along with. She was short of friends in secondary which saddened me though.

DS was easily wound up for a while in primary, always too slow to know when to stop talking (having been the last to start), could be made to get the giggles at the wrong moment and so on. Adults who knew him tried to protect him from school discipline but he still ended up with detentions from playground incidents. I think his school did some social story work with him at one point. He was privileged to have a small group of similarly extremely able friends both there and at secondary. He's turned into the most laid-back personable let it wash over me young man, can get along with anyone as far as I can tell. To an extent I reached the same point (get along with anyone) - but about 10 years or more later!

Writing this I'm struck that the thing that made the biggest difference was the behaviour of non-parent adults around us. When there were caring teachers around who saw who and what children were, and judged or intervened accordingly, outcomes were positive.

I think schools are much better nowadays. I’ve worked in several secondary schools for 20+ years and kids seem to be allowed to be comfortable in their niche much easier than when I was at school. Individuality is embraced and accepted. When I was at school if you weren’t from the right estate/had the right trainers you were roasted.

They would say yes they were bullied, but I perceive none had it as bad as me. 2 of them also went thru spells of being very popular (never happened to me) and most of them always had at least one friend at school (I wasn't so lucky).

I wasn’t bullied but wasn’t popular until sixth form; predominantly due to being ugly and having unruly hair. I was bright and hardworking, but not ‘geeky’ or ‘weird’ enough to be a target - I had the latest clothes etc. It helped that it was a small rural secondary, and that my sister was basically queen of the school.

I don’t worry too much about my DDs seeing as they both have enough of DH’s features to be conventionally pretty, but I also think that schools have changed a lot in the last 30 years. Social media has opened the world up, and thus differences are less of a big deal, inclusivity is (rightly) pushed and intelligence is valued more.

What I do worry about is the social media pressure to have so much - the latest phones, games systems, tablets etc are much more expensive and prevalent than they were in the days of Nokia bricks. If you live in a wealthy area, there must be immense pressure for secondary school students to keep up with their peers.

Omg I could have written that myself. My parents also made me wear odd clothes. They had me quite late in life so they were from an earlier generation (even 2 generations earlier) than the parents of others my age. And they were also stuck in that generation and wouldn’t leave it - my friends would get new clothes whenever their old ones were worn or got holes in them. Mine were from the ‘repair and make do generation’ so I’d turn up to school in odd clothes with holes that had been stitched, shoes that had been repaired etc, holes in my tights and I was laughed at and bullied for it! I also seemed to be brought up on some strict, controlling regime where makeup was seen as wrong, trainers and jeans were seen as ghastly (because my dad wasn’t brought up to wear them and worse tailored trousers). I wasn’t really allowed to pick and choose what I wore, even in my teens and I even used to hide the fact that I was experimenting with makeup at 16/17 years old! As you can imagine, I was bullied relentlessly! And due to them only having a bath once a week on a Sunday in their own childhood (that’s how often people used to get bathed in the 40s/ 50s apparently) they also brought me up on only having baths once a week! As you can imagine I was probably quite smelly most days I went to school!!!

Strangely enough, like your parents, years later they also denied that I’d been bullied! Yup…. I now recognise it as gaslighting - to go with the rest of their odd behaviour they inflicted on us that’s what it is! Emotional abuse and control!

Oh I am so sorry to hear about your little sister, that is truly truly awful.

It does raise a good point, we really need to make sure that DS is comfortable in coming to us to tell us about things if he has problems.

In respect of socialising - he has been in nursery full time since he was 1, so he is very used to spending all day playing with a class full of children, and is getting used to the idea that some children he likes and some he doesn't.

DH and I aren't exactly the most charismatic and popular people ourselves, but we'll encourage him to have different friendship groups

No, I wasn't bullied but I was ignored. To the point of meeting school class mates working in London and they claimed not to remember me. Weird. I remembered everybody.

Both my kids more popular than I ever was. Even though my younger dc, his behaviour has been at times pretty shocking,but he can still gather a big crew.

I was an extrovert with no sense of my self. I was a people pleasing extrovert.
Extrovert is not Confident. They're not the same thing. Your kids can say "no" they Don want to go out, because they don't want. Say OK.

I wasn't bullied badly, but I was friendless throughout primary school and always struggled to fit in.

My dd1 is very quiet and introverted and I was worried about her in her big London state schools. But she has been fine, found her group of friends and never had any hassle (has now left school).

Dd2 is still at that school and is very popular.

So no, it was one of the things I worried about most but it hasn't been a problem.

Is it a primary school you are looking for, not secondary?

In which case I'd caution a small primary. From experience it makes the transition up to secondary much, much harder. Instead of small primary, I'd focus on larger but nurturing.

Yes I was in primary school. My kids haven't been.
I sent them to nicer schools than the ones I went to. And I swore to myself that with the first sign of bullying I would deregister them. No ifs or buts or empty promises from school staff.

I agree with this. I’m shy and introvert but I’m self assured. I know my own mind (which I think is the most important thing) but as I am shy many make the assumption I’m not confident

I’ve found some very socially confident people to be needy of attention and insecure just as I have found shy people to be

I was bullied. I was an army child so always the new kid. If at army school then it was fine but at postings where we had to go to the local civilian school it was pretty savage. They hated us.

My oldest was home educated so no bullying, my younger child had a few skirmishes but he school were absolutely brilliant and stamped on it ruthlessly at the very first sign so it was never able to become entrenched.

Whatever you looked like and however precocious or ‘odd’ you were, people who tease and put down people who aren’t bothering or harming them are shits, and yes, they are bullies.

I think it's quite important to model good social behaviour and teach children how to make friends as well.

It's been comparatively recently that I realised that part of my difficulty in making friends at school was because my parents had brought me up with the viewpoint that our family was better than everyone else so I should not make any effort to interact with others as they should approach me first, and I should regularly test any friendship by insulting them or being very negative (as "proper" friends would realise I was joking). Sending me to school with a randomly hacked off haircut and the "wrong" clothes didn't help either. It sounds like some people on this thread had similar parents :) And yes, mine also gaslighted me about the bullying. Although, if it did happen it was because everyone was jealous of me.